How to properly ban the Communist Party of Ukraine?

AS A RESULT OF A HEATED ARGUMENT BETWEEN TURCHYNOV AND SYMONENKO THE MICROPHONE OF THE LEADER OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF UKRAINE WAS SWITCHED OFF AND HE WAS THREATENED WITH A BAN OF THE PARTY. VERKHOVNA RADA. MAY 13, 2014/ Photo by Mykola TYMCHENKO, The Day

The Communist Party may disappear from the political map of Ukraine. “There are many materials regarding KPU’s implication in organization of terroristic and separatist activity,” Speaker Oleksandr Turchynov said at yesterday’s parliamentary session. “I will appeal to the Ministry of Justice to consider this question and, if there is proof, to file a lawsuit on the ban of the Communist Party of Ukraine.”

This statement was a result of a heated debate in the session hall of the parliament. The KPU leader Petro Symonenko from the parliamentary rostrum accused the government of masterminding the massacre in Odesa, called the law enforcers from Western regions and the National Guard fighters “cutthroats,” stating that they allegedly shot at “peaceful protesters in Mariupol.”

Speaker Turchynov could not stand the torrent of open lie mouthed by the Communist and asked to switch off Symonenko’s microphone. “In Mariupol criminals-terrorists attacked the department of internal affairs, killed policemen, and a squadron of landing troops was defending those policemen,” Turchynov explained his demand. “Symonenko is repeating the lies and propaganda that are being spread by Russian mass media, including in the West.”

The Speaker emotionally exclaimed: “You have neither conscience, nor honor! ... You are brazenly lying! ... Take your seat! ... I am denying you the right to speak! ... Parliament is not a place for liars! ... Find another place to lie!” In response he heard the cries of discontent Communists and a few representatives of the Party of Regions.

“Turchynov must have an equal attitude to everyone and stop every person who dares make statements which instigate conflicts in the state. For example, today he should have stopped Tiahnybok’s speech at a certain point of time,” MP Hanna Herman commented on the standpoint of the PoR to The Day and added, “It is impossible to fight ideology with the help of bans. This is Bolshevism and a way to nowhere. I don’t believe they will be efficient. Ideology can be overcome only by ideology,” stated Herman, who said on television back in 2012 that the first draft law she would submit for consideration to the next parliament would be the bill on the ban of the Communist ideology.

MP from UDAR Iryna Herashchenko considers that because the Communist Party now refuses to vote for the laws needed for Ukraine, openly defends terrorism, mocks death of patriots of Ukraine, it simply has no right to represent Ukrainian people. “The Communist Party of Ukraine should go to a political waste dump,” Herashchenko says, “All the more so this party, which calls itself the successor of the Communist Party of the USSR, has not yet apologized for the Holodomor and all the repressions of Stalin’s regime against Ukrainians. Communists continue to carry out the policy of splitting Ukraine.”

Lawyer Volodymyr Vasylenko in a commentary to The Day noted that there are more than enough legal grounds to ban the KPU. “Starting with the research of the statute clauses of the party and finishing with the facts of its present activity,” the expert says. “The Ministry of Justice simply has to generalize all the materials that confirm the criminal activity of the Communist Party (the representatives of various political parties and civic organizations have mentioned them) and launch a corresponding action in court.” “If there is desire and political will, this can be done within relatively short terms,” Vasylenko resumed.

But is it enough? The Communist Party was banned in the 1991, but it was restored in 1993. Moreover, in December 2001 the Constitutional Court of Ukraine found that the ban of the KPU in 1991was illegal. That was how the then president Leonid Kuchma thanked Petro Symonenko for successful work as his sparring partner during the 1999 elections. At that time the KPU was used as a tracing paper of Moscow political strategy. So, are we going to be witness to realization of another Moscow strategy against Ukraine?

“The ban of the Communist Party without new Nuremberg process, this time for Lenin, Stalin, and their successor, ban of the communist ideology, total lustration of former party and Komsomol functionaries of all levels will play against Ukraine, its political institutions, and its future,” historian and publicist Andrii Plakhonin writes on his Facebook page. “Because the cause of the Communist Party will live even not in the person of its direct successor, which will immediately emerge after this ban, but above all in the person of the offshoots of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union which make the absolute majority of state officials and functionaries of all political parties of Ukraine, by no exception.”

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